Seperate Sameness
by FlameOfIllumination
Summary: Fiyero wakes, on the way to die. Is it better to die free or live in a cage? How big a price can anyone pay for love? Elphaba finds that old love can be a blessing, as well as a brand.
1. Chapter 1

_He wanted to tell Elphie what he had seen, but he held back for reasons he couldn't name. In some way, in the balance of their affections, he sensed she needed an identity separate from his. Were he to become a convert to her cause, she might drift away. He did not dare risk it. But the vision of the battered Bear cub haunted him. _

(Wicked)

_We start out in identical perfection, bright, reflective, full of sun. The accident of our lives bruises us into dirty individuality. We meet with grief, our character dulls and tarnishes. We meet with guilt. We know, we know, the price of living is corruption. There isn't as much light as there once was. In the grave we lapse back into undifferentiated sameness._

(A Lion Amongst Men, page 8)

* * *

><p><strong>Fiyero<strong>

Fiyero woke, sometime along the terrible journey towards his death. He was in a cart, with hay bales piled on top of him and sawdust beneath. Blood dripped steadily in his eyes as he lay immobile. The steady clip of a pair of jogging horses, and the hacking cough of whomever it was driving them, was the soundtrack of his last moments.

He opened one eye, blinking rapidly to keep the blood out of it.

Above, the sky was blue. It was the same blue as his diamond tattoos, an evening shade. The air around him was warm, and filled with the scents of a farming country. Foreign as it was to his desert trained senses, and to the newer city acclimatization, it was pleasant.

Something in the blows, that first initial strike by the Gale Force, had robbed Fiyero of his strength. It seemed incredible, when only hours ago he had been young and vital, strong. He tried, once, to shift the bales on top of him, but his legs hung lifelessly and the blood leaked out of him remorselessly. It was easier, so easy it was comfortable, to lay back and rest and simply let life go.

_So this is how it ends? Fabala will be so cross at me…all my boasting about my tracking skills and I don't notice a squadron of soldiers following me home._

_My children…Irji, my heir. The spare, Manok, and my daughter…my daughter…_

But her name will not come to mind, and Fiyero only remembers a shy smile and a little girl peeking out from behind her mother's skirts. Then this picture becomes confused with a Lion cub, mewling in a cage the same grey as the walls of Kiamo Ko. Grey like the curtains in the Philosophy Club. Why did I go there? _To prove that a virgin husband was a man nonetheless?_

Far more real, more vital, is the face of Elphaba. Angular, sometimes hard, sometimes soft. Open, rarely. Closed, mostly.

He coughed- a racking spasm that coated the sawdust with more blood.

Her skin was so soft, in between small scars that decorated her hands. He'd taken her hands in his own, larger ones, and kissed them, asking about the scars. She laughed darkly and distracted him with her body, and he, stupidly male, let it go.

_Let her go. Let her strike back against oppression on her own. Was it all part of some grander plot? Kill Madame Morrible, save the Bear cub clubbed on the head. Save the parents from their grief.  
><em>

Stupid, too, to let Lady Glinda go. Some decaying instinct told him now, as he had not comprehended then, that she could have been useful. Saved or condemned Elphaba. They could have lived in Southstairs together, a fairy tale in a pit of vipers. They could have lived with the Lady Glinda, a tame witch and a wild man on a leash, wheeled out for parties and kept in a much fancier cage. Crope would have fed them peanuts through the gilded bars.

Fiyero groaned, loud enough to be heard by the driver of the cart in which he lay- the man began to whistle a jaunty tune to drown out the sound of another man dying.

The blood in the baby Bear's eyes, it looked as red and probably felt as warm as the blood in his own eyes. In his mouth, in his hair, in his clothes and even his shoes.

_No Mother Bear here amongst the hay to grieve. No mother father sister elphaba fae Fabala lalala boq glinda crope tibbet nessa avaric sarima irji lion tyger bear red red red horse hay night blue blue blue blue grey grey grey __**BLACK**__._

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><p>Fiyero is warm when he dies, cocooned inside a hay bale, dreaming of Lions, Tygers and (a family of) Bears.<p>

He never reaches the swamps where his body will be dumped, never feels the flames as they pile the blood soaked hay onto his carcass, and light it.

Two men stand near the fire, smoking and talking quietly.

"Apparently this one is a barbarian princeling. Explains why we had to cover him.

"If not why we had to waste so much hay."

"Poor bastard."

"Smells like a pork dinner to me."

* * *

><p>(In the Emerald City, Elphaba sank her hands into the liquid which pooled in front of the fireplace.)<p>

(She gazed at the walls, sprinkled with blood like a spray of cherry blossoms)

(Her heart froze inside of her)


	2. Chapter 2

**Elphaba**

* * *

><p>There had been no funeral, of course. Officially, Fiyero Tigelaar was simply missing, probably returned to his wild home without notice.<p>

The life of the bustling Emerald City continued on without pause.

Elphaba Thropp was also missing.

She'd disappeared without a trace, fleeing from her makeshift home with Fiyero's blood on her hands. She fled fast enough and frantically enough to lose her tail, the Cat Malky who'd been spying on the happy couple for the Wizard.

Student became rebel became lover became sister. A maunt, of the order of Saint Glinda.

...

Elphaba had been frantic with loss, and fled, her feet instinctively taking her to the pretty streets where Lady Glinda Chuffrey resided. Eventually, she came to her senses enough to realize what would happen if a woman dressed like a street rat, soaked in blood, turned up at the high society house of an old friend. So she turned away, down back streets, places where she didn't stand out. Still, some part of her knew that she'd be spotted anyway, that eventually her shame would be dragged into the light. Elphaba couldn't bring herself to care, and busied herself in daydreams where she and Fiyero had fled the city, and lived in a farmhouse.

Right next door to Boq, no doubt.

Elphaba snorted, but this expression of almost-laughter brought tears instead. From somewhere behind she could hear the even martial tread of the Gale Force, no doubt one of those patrolling foursomes she'd seen on her way into the city, seven long years ago.

Madness gripped her, and she was turning, ready to wave and call out to them, ready to get her blood and Fiyero's all over their pretty uniforms, all scarlet and blue.

Then her eye caught a name. A tattered board, hanging on the wall of a stone building opposite her.

_'Saint Glinda's'_

The other words were worn away, lost to time and neglect. Elphaba stole another glance down the street. The guards had stopped, they were chatting. Another moment and they'd see her. Another moment and she'd be lost.

Elphaba looked back at the sign.

Glinda Upland had been her best friend. Her first kiss. Hers to protect and coddle.

Now, all unknowing, she was her rescuer. Her hero.

Elphaba slunk backwards, dazed. Her tears ran over. She slid to the ground amongst the refuse of this back street, out of sight of the guard who would have ended her life. The ground was cold and hard, and the stink of humanity all around her.

Elphaba thrust grim reality away from her.

Instead she sat in the sun next to the Suicide Canal, with sweet Glinda beside her. Crope and Tibbet wrestled playfuly and Boq rolled his eyes and tried to look dignified. Avaric sneered off to one side, an amused smile on his lips. Fiyero watched it all shyly, rarely venturing a word, but part of the group unmistakably. Nanny knitted, and Nessa preached. Elphaba cackled.

Yero my hero. Glinda my sweet.


End file.
